


Impostor Syndrome

by Syntax



Series: 50k Challenge Oneshots [6]
Category: Fire Emblem Heroes
Genre: Conversations, Dialogue Heavy, Fire Emblem: Awakening Spoilers, Gen, Identity Porn, Reference to other Fire Emblem games, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-04
Updated: 2020-02-04
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:47:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22538785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Syntax/pseuds/Syntax
Summary: "I've been meaning to speak with you," Sirius said, nearly causing Lucina to jump in alarm at the sudden noise.  "Ah.  Apologies.  I did not mean to startle you.""No, no, it was my fault for not paying attention," she replied, waving him off.  "Speak as freely as you like, Sirius.  I only hope that I haven't offended you."He shook his head lightly.  "No, nothing of the sort.  There's just something that I've been meaning to ask you, but I could never find the right time to do so.  Now seemed as good a time as any.""Ask away, then.  I'll try my best to answer satisfactorily.""Why Marth?"
Series: 50k Challenge Oneshots [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1627744
Kudos: 28





	Impostor Syndrome

Dawn had not yet quite finished breaking, but there promised to be a lot of sunshine in Askr this day. It was a perfect spring morning. Flowers were blooming in the fields and gardens, and birds were soaring happily in the air. For another soldier, perhaps, the idea that they would have to spend a day this fine doing border patrol rather than lazing about in meadows or catching fish would likely be a harsh joke.

For Lucina, it meant that she'd be able to see as much sunshine as she could while still aiding her fellow soldiers in the Order of Heroes.

Or rather, the time-displaced princess noted as she pinned her mask into place, the enigmatic Masked Marth would be patrolling Askr today. Not that the choice of names or guises mattered much in the end; the person she presented herself as while completing her work was far less important than the actual work being done.

She gave her gear one last look-over and, satisfied, walked briskly over to the gates of the castle to meet up with her partner for today's border patrol. The Summoner had seen fit to pair her with Sirius, the first Hero they'd managed to successfully summon from the World of Mystery. Being supposedly from the World of Mystery herself, Lucina imagined the Summoner thought they would work well together.

She endeavored not to disappoint them. The castle gates came into view quite quickly, and so did a knight in black tending to a horse. That must be him.

"Are we ready to head out?" Lucina asked when she came close enough, voice slipping into a lower range.

A much lower voice than hers answered her. "I'm ready to leave whenever you are," the black-clad knight said as he turned to face his partner. The early morning sunlight glinted off his own mask as he spoke. "I take it you have everything you need?"

"Yes. Provisions have been triple-checked and weapons honed to the best of my ability. Short of a small army, we should be more than ready to rout any foe we might chance upon along the borders."

Sirius gave a thoughtful hum, climbing up on his horse as he did so. "And if we chance upon someone in need of assistance?" He said, offering her a hand.

She took the hand and hopped up on the rear of the horse's saddle, only just large enough to fit them both. "I've brought vulneraries with me, and extra sending stones in case we encounter someone in need of more serious treatment back at the castle."

"Well-prepared as always, Marth." The masked knight said with a small smile. "Onward to the border then."

He gave a light tapping of his heels against the horse's belly, and off they went in the direction of the first checkpoint.

For all its grandeur, the Castle of Heroes was as much a garrison for soldiers as it was a home for royalty. The only difference was that the soldiers the castle was meant to house were of a somewhat different breed. Heroes summoned from different worlds didn't need the same training or resources that soldiers drafted from the Askran people did after all. Many of them were even royalty themselves, like Lucina was.

She glanced over at Sirius marching a scant few paces away from her. Many, but not all.

The early morning sun that had accompanied the two of them to the edge of Askr's southern border had gradually vanished as open road gave way to wooded paths. The southern border of Askr was checkerboarded with woods and fields, making it difficult for an approaching army to remain hidden for long. They had ridden to the first checkpoint together before dismounting and continuing on foot.

Their objective for the day was to march along the perimeter until they met up with another border patrol team in a certain village about five or six hours march from their starting point. Commander Anna didn't expect any enemy encounters along the way, but bandits can pop up even in the most peaceful of places, and war could often come unexpectedly. It was best to be prepared.

The two masked soldiers marched in companionable silence, with the only sounds between them being the soft crunch of grass underfoot and the occasional rustling of animals in the underbrush.

Lucina hardly minded the silence. The comparative lack of human noise was something that she'd grown used to in the ruined future of her home, where there hadn't been a lot of living humans left to make noise in the first place. She wasn't used to being in a place full of living, breathing, talking people, and she doubted that she'd make a good conversationalist if her partner had wanted to talk while they marched. Thankfully, the knight seemed to be the sort of man who kept his words close to his chest.

Lucina really didn't know all that much about Sirius. They'd spoken once or twice at the Castle, but nothing that could point to who he was as a person. If she thought hard, she could vaguely remember studying about the past of Ylisse as a child, back when it was still called Archanea, and the countries that would become their home called Archanea, Pyrathi, Talys, and others. She could recall reading about the War of Shadows, and the War of Heroes, but she didn't know which conflict the masked knight might've made his name in, and she didn't know how.

Perhaps she might ask him one day, on the off chance that he'd never met the real Prince Marth.

"I've been meaning to speak with you," Sirius said, nearly causing Lucina to jump in alarm at the sudden noise. "Ah. Apologies. I did not mean to startle you."

"No, no, it was my fault for not paying attention," she replied, waving him off. "Speak as freely as you like, Sirius. I only hope that I haven't offended you."

He shook his head lightly. "No, nothing of the sort. There's just something that I've been meaning to ask you, but I could never find the right time to do so. Now seemed as good a time as any."

"Ask away, then. I'll try my best to answer satisfactorily."

"Why Marth?"

Lucina froze mid-stride.

A few paces off to the side, she could hear both Sirius and his horse stop to keep pace with her sudden stillness. She glanced in his direction. Tried to find some kind of clue on his face as to where the question had come from.

What little she could see under the mask was unmoving and indecipherable.

She let out a deep breath and continued walking. Recovering from that would be difficult, but not impossible.

"...What do you mean, 'why Marth?'", the masked princess asked, a defensive edge creeping into her lowered voice. "Why Askr? Why _Sirius?_ I don't understand the question. You might as well ask the stars why they shine. They simply _are._ "

A few paces behind her as well as to the side, Sirius gave a sigh. He sounded tired.

"You do not need to keep up pretenses," he said. "There was a reason why I waited to have this discussion until we could be alone. I know what would drive someone to keep such secrets perhaps better than anyone else currently in the Order."

Lucina stopped walking again. She looked back.

The black of Sirius's uniform made the white of his mask stand out all the more sharply under the sunlight.

She turned her head again.

For perhaps a few moments, the two soldiers stood in silence once more. A more complete silence this time, emptier without the footfalls that had once accompanied them along the southern border, and a more unbearable silence for it.

This time, however, it was Lucina who broke the quiet between them.

"What first caused you to suspect I was not who I claimed to be?"

Her voice was low, but not in the same way that it had been. There was no fake roughness to the edges of her words. No simulated masculinity. She was not speaking as the Hero-King Marth, who united the continent of Archanea and founded her famous bloodline.

She was speaking as Lucina, time-tossed princess who gave up everything she had known and loved in her world's future in an effort to save its past.

Largely oblivious to the difference in tone, the masked man behind her hummed in thought.

"I am... quite familiar with how Prince Marth fights. In a past life I fought him as an enemy, while in this life I fought _with_ him as an ally." He said. "Though you share many of his more notable traits as a commander, your swordsmanship differs from his significantly."

Lucina bit back a curse. Of _course_ the first Hero summoned from Marth's time would have known him well enough to see right through her. She was a fool to think she could keep this secret for as long as she had.

She was a fool to even try keeping this secret in Askr to begin with. The Order of Heroes were not the men and women she needed to hide her identity from—what would Prince Alfonse know about the royal family of Ylisse?

Beside her, Sirius continued his explanation.

"You've a more brusque way of speaking. You're far quicker than he was to suggest attacking a foe rather than reasoning with one. Even the way you carry yourself is different. At first, I had thought that you went through a harsher war than the Marth I knew had, and had come out a different man because of it. With all the different iterations of Lady Camilla that populate the Castle of Heroes, such a theory didn't seem quite so absurd."

"You're not wrong in that regard. Not entirely, at least," she said with a huff. It was more of a laugh, really. A bitter one.

As far as she knew, only Sirius had joined the Order from the World of Mystery, but the Order of Heroes housed many of Lucina's countrymen from the World of Awakening. Every day she saw and talked to and trained with unfamiliar versions of her father, her mother, all the senior members of her father's army that had never known the suffering that would come to them in just a scant few years. Her father spoke of his elder sister as if she were still alive, not knowing that she would be assassinated long before her niece was ever born. Her mother still had all the fingers on her right hand. More than a few of their fellows that had died early on after the world had ended still walked and talked without any fear.

She'd lived a harsher life than her fellows, surely, but Lucina had never thought that it would be obvious just from observing her. Perhaps that was why she failed. She'd been so used to knowing that her status as a princess wouldn't save her from certain death in the face of the shambling dead that roamed the land that she'd forgotten that royalty traditionally had much kinder lives.

How odd that the life of a man who had been driven into exile from his own kingdom on penalty of death as a child could be considered kinder than her own.

"What gave it away in the end that I was not Prince Marth?" She asked.

"You didn't know who I was."

"And the possibility that I had been summoned from a time before we ever met didn't cross your mind?"

"You wouldn't be wielding Falchion if that was the case," Sirius said coldly.

He took a step forward.

"You misunderstand what I meant. I told you that I fought Marth as an enemy. We fought in the War of Shadows, before he'd ever even set eyes on the same holy sword that you now carry. When I joined him years later during the War of Heroes, he recognized me at once as that same enemy, but he never breathed a word of who I had once been. Not even in passing. Not even in private. Not even to me. He just knew, and he knew that I knew he knew as well."

The black-clad knight paused there for a moment. He seemed to think of something, or lose himself in a memory, but all too quickly he shook his head and started speaking again.

"When I arrived in the Castle of Heroes after being told that Prince Marth had already been summoned before me, I thought that perhaps I might finally get an answer for his silence. But then I spoke with you in the castle halls, and you addressed me as if I were a stranger."

"Isn't that the point of wearing a mask?" Lucina challenged, feeling some irrational need to defend herself in the face of what she couldn't possibly have known. Perhaps physically if he needed to. Her hand itched for Falchion's hilt. "To be seen as someone completely different?"

Sirius took another step forward. She took a step back. This seemed to trouble the knight from what little Lucina could see of his face, though she couldn't fathom why.

He took a deep breath and shook his head. "Ultimately, yes," Sirius conceded. "It is. So why have you chosen Prince Marth for yours?"

For a third time, there was silence between them.

No footsteps on the grass, no animals in the underbrush, hardly even any wind in the trees. There was no sound around them at all except the beating of Lucina's own heart.

Huh. Why was it so fast if they were only talking?

She knew the answer to his question. Whether because of her connection to Naga or her knowledge of Askr's castles, her possession of Falchion, her skills as a swordsman, her experience leading an army—even something as simple as the color of her hair, the princess knew why she'd chosen the Hero-King as her guise. It was the most logical choice. It was the most _practical_ choice.

But... No, there was something more, wasn't there? She could remember stories of there being more than one Falchion, one across the seas that had been lost to time. If Lucina had truly wanted, she could have claimed that hers was the lost blade, that its resemblance to the Falchion that her father carried was due to some link the swords shared. She could have. But she didn't.

There was something more there that she must've forgotten. Something beyond just practicality. Something perhaps even back to the daydreams of a little girl reading old stories from the past like they were fairy tales. A little girl wrapped safe in the arms of her father, excited and happy and dreaming of a world that could be.

Ah. Yes. She remembered now.

"I chose the name of Marth because I wish to change the fate of my homeland as he once did," Lucina said slowly, voice thick with the memory of times long past, "And when you wear the name of hope itself, even the greatest of odds do not seem so insurmountable anymore."

The masked knight was unimpressed. "You seek to defy fate itself?"

"I seek to defy anything that would prevent me from obtaining a better future for those I love."

Sirius's expression continued to be completely indecipherable. For a single, impossibly long moment, she had no idea what was going to happen next. He didn't move a muscle. He didn't make a sound. Lucina's gaze wandered to the lance strapped to his horse, just barely still within his reach, and wondered if the knight would attack her for her words.

She readied herself to draw Falchion if that was the case. Then she heard a sound that could've easily been the creaking of an old door, or a dry coughing, and realized that Sirius was laughing.

There was a smile on the man's face when Lucina glanced back. "I see then," he said, sounding as if a weight had been taken off of his shoulders, though she couldn't begin to guess what. "That we are the same. As we are, we can only march endlessly towards our own doom, but with a mask and a name we can change the fate that has been laid out before us."

"You seek a better future as well?" Lucina asked, caught off guard. She couldn't remember if her old studies had included much on the motivations of the Hero-King's soldiers. This was new information to her.

The smile on the knight's face wavered. "...I do. But not for myself. There are those I left behind in my old life that still need my assistance. I would never be able to rest until they are safe."

Ah. She thought back to what she and her fellows had left behind in that ruined future. There was nothing left to come back to by the time they had all prepared to journey into the past together, but Lucina would be lying if she said that abandoning what little living souls were left with little more than the promise that their lives would be better if the future could be changed didn't leave a bad taste in her mouth whenever her thoughts wandered.

"Yes... I believe I can relate to that sentiment."

She thought in silence. She took a step forward.

"Have I answered your question satisfactorily, Sirius?" She asked.

"Hmm? Ah, yes. Yes, I believe you have." He answered. The knight ran a gloved hand through his hair. "My apologies if I came across as too forward. I feared that perhaps you simply sought a Hero's glory, and the thought... Did not agree with me."

"If it makes you feel better, I _am_ related to Marth. The resemblance is no mere costume."

He scowled comically. "Don't tell me that. I'd feel indebted to reveal some of my own secrets as well."

"You aren't interested in hearing who I am underneath this mask?"

"No. You're entitled to your own secrets. And even if that weren't the case, there is much about myself that I would prefer to keep private for the time being."

Lucina nodded.

"I understand. Still," she said, almost wistfully, "It would be nice to have someone to talk to honestly about such things. It's... a bit isolating, wearing a mask."

"Perhaps another time, then. Shall we resume marching?"

"Lets."

Sirius took hold of his horse's reins again and fell into step alongside Lucina just a few paces away as they walked. She could hear the wind rustling through the trees and leaves, the animals scurrying around in the underbrush. Perhaps the silence wasn't quite companionable again yet, but Lucina had no doubts it would grow comfortable again now that what needed to be said was said. There was already a lighter air between them again than there had been a few moments ago. She could see the sunlight peeking out from behind the treetops and felt at peace.

...

Actually... Perhaps the air was too light.

"What is it?" Lucina asked.

"'When you wear the name of hope itself'?" Sirius echoed, the faintest upturned quirk to his lips. "Should the Summoner ever bring forth the true Marth into this realm, I might have to share that one with him. He'd likely be a bit overcome."

Lucina felt her face turn as red as the brooch pinning her cloak. "Don't you dare...!"

"You could have perhaps picked a more inconspicuous name for yourself," the knight said conversationally.

She pulled her cloak over her head as she walked, mortification only increasing. "I wield _Falchion_. 'Inconspicuous' wasn't really an option for me," the time-tossed princess groaned.

"Hmm. Pity, that."

**Author's Note:**

> this fic exists because i paired camus and masked marth together for one of the tempests and found that they actually made a great team (and a hilarious couple)
> 
> i'd had the fic concepted for probably over a year, but by the time i started writing it sirius had been released and i realized that he would probably be a better fit for this story than camus would be


End file.
